I’ve been pondering a question for a while, “What am I afraid of?” It’s one of those questions people are tempted to give quick answers too, like “spiders!” I’m not sure the quick answers, however, are good reflections of what people are really afraid of. I think people are alarmed by spiders [1]. Fear, however,…
Category: Pastoring
How a church died
Tonight our association held their annual meeting at a church which shut down several years ago. I’ve been in the building several times since it closed down, and it’s always depressed me — the musty smell, the empty space, the sheer amount of lost potential. Until tonight, however, I’d never quite figured out how the…
What is a “Creative?”
Today I read an article about finding the next Steve Jobs. It makes the point that many companies are incapable of finding such a person because “creatives” are natural “non-conformists” who get weeded out by the hiring process. Creative-types tend to throw up red-flags which reveal how they won’t fit in the corporate structure. This…
Don’t comment angry
I recently read a Huffington Post Article asking the question, “What if kids don’t want our church?” It likened church structures (both organizational and physical) to “family heirlooms” which may have been treasured for generations but no longer fit the goals and lifestyles of the current generation. There’s a lot I agree with in the…
Trained Up
Two years ago, the folks who make Accordance graciously accepted an invite to come Central Baptist and offer a training seminar for the folks in South Jersey (and beyond). Just over a month ago, I got an email from those same folks saying they were going to be in a nearby seminary, and wondered if…
Come, ye sinner, poor and needy
One of my favorite hymns is Come, ye sinners, poor and needy. I sometimes get some flak for selecting it because people see it as a “downer,” but I’ll take this hymn over 90% of the praise music we sing. It also ranks up there with some of the great theological hymns of the faith like A…
